CARRIE SNOW is in a hurry, stamping around her rented Oakland house trying to get ready for a show. “This place is a mess,” she moans on the phone to the reporter. “I need a bulldozer to clean it up.” Then she announces, she has to go now so that she can put on her make-up. “Spackle,” she deadpans. “I have to use Spackle.”

Snow, 27, is one of the few stand-up comediennes in the Bay Area (she was the only woman in the Top Ten of the 1980 San Francisco International Open Stand-Up Comedy competition). She stands out from the crowd not only due to her ample size (5’7”, 175 pounds) but because she uses that excess tonnage in her act. 

“What’s the matter?” she says, stepping onto the Punch Line stage. “Haven’t you ever seen thighs in two time zones before?” She goes on to discuss a weight-reducing spa she visited, the Elizabeth Arden’s Main Chance. “I got sent to the annex out back: Fat Chance,” she quips. Later she mentions that the jeans she’s wearing aren’t Gloria Vanderbilt – “they’re Gloria Peterbilt.”

“I acknowledge my weight,” Snow admits weeks later, calling from the apartment she rents in Hollywood when not in Oakland. “But I also acknowledge that I’m hot stuff and gorgeous – fat or thin.”

Nevertheless, Snow makes herself the butt of many jokes. She describes her new curly hairdo as “Donna Summer with a gland problem” and she seemingly unveils pent-up jealousy of slim models when she says, “Have you seen those blonde sluts in L.A. with those tight Spandex pants? They’re so tight, you can almost hear the infections growing. I like to push those girls down in the bathroom and steal their gold jewelry.”

It is material like that which has made Snow a headliner in comedy clubs from La Jolla and Palm Springs to Sacramento and got her selected as one of the best of the Comedy Store performers at Mitzi Shore’s famous club. Having done comedy for a mere three years, she has already achieved the unlikely honor of being the third woman to perform at the Comic Strip in Florida. 

Snow made her comedy debut at the Holy City 100 on mother’s 21, birthday. Feb. 1978, The date her coincidence but did have some meaning: Snow was telling her mother that pleasing herself was her first priority. *I was supposed to be in law school and doing things correctly,” says Snow. “Instead I was doing what I wanted.” 

Snow spent last February through August es the emcee at Off Broadway, the male strip club. “The job changed my life,” she said. “I learned I could talk to and that they enjoyed people saying silly things. Ragging on women is nothing new but it’s safer than doing it to men.” And yet, Snow has found that women can be even more difficult to please than men. On the one hand she will. hear women . gush, “God, that needed to be said,”on the other she will bear the brunt of some female hecklers.

”Fortunately, Snow is often rewarded by night club waitresses who put down their trays and listen when she takes the stage. They can see she is grabbing for all the gusto she can, and doing so without a manager. 

She prefers to concentrate on writing material. During those times that she “panics over volume,” she accepts jokes -from friends and others. Some of Snow’s friends have nothing to do with show biz and therefore “can’t understand the sickness” of working six to seven nights a week. “I’ve given up my social life to work all the time, admits, she “even during the week when I could be going out.” 

The fact that stand-up comedy is dominated by men basn’t deterred Snow one iota. especially since she “almost got Biggest Flirt” as a high school senior and her parents “never told me I couldn’t do comedy.” She’s always been a self-starter and she’s always felt that women are just as funny as men. Being so determined got her through her apprentice days when she was the new kid on the block. 

“People say, ‘You should get together with the women and form a group. “ she says. “Hey, my idea of a good time is not bitching and moaning about how difficult things are. My idea is going out and doing things. “When I started, there was only one other woman, V. Sande Childers performing locally. All the men treated me like I had leprosy. But 1 can’t say it was because I’m a woman: they treated the new men like that too.”